


Together

by celeste9



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy, Star Wars: Shattered Empire
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Domestic Fluff, Established Relationship, Extra Treat, Family, Fluff and Angst, Multi, Pre-Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-01
Updated: 2018-12-01
Packaged: 2019-08-26 19:34:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16687612
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/celeste9/pseuds/celeste9
Summary: At times, with the Rebel Alliance, it had seemed nearly impossible, that they would ever win, that she and Kes would ever come home to Poe, that they would have the good, simple life they had wanted.It maybe wasn’t quite as simple as they had originally dreamed, Shara thought, her gaze on Cassian, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.





	Together

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nichestars](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nichestars/gifts).



Shara opened her eyes, the light peaking in through the curtains dim, so that she knew the sun had only just begun to rise. She closed her eyes but then gave up, knowing she would never return to sleep. Poe was arriving today from the Navy; she was too excited to sleep.

She stretched her arm across the bed and found an empty place; Cassian was already gone. At her back was Kes, his hand on her hip. She stirred, and Kes stirred with her.

“Baby,” he mumbled, “it’s too early.”

Rolling over to face him, Shara said, “Cassian’s already awake.”

“Cassian is an insane person and we just humor him.”

Shara chuckled under her breath. “You know you used to be all about early mornings.” It had been annoying, honestly, that commando schedule he retained years after the Rebellion had ended.

“Now I’m older and wiser. Also, I need my beauty sleep. Because of the old thing.”

“But Poe is coming home today.”

Kes groaned. “Poe hates mornings. Not even the military has changed that.”

“So we’ll just be extra prepared by the time he gets here.”

“Prepared for what? His room’s still there.”

Shara knocked her fist into his shoulder as she pushed herself up in bed, intentionally making as big a disturbance as she could. Kes’ features creased in sleepy annoyance. “Get up, babe. I’ll make breakfast.”

“I’ll get up when I smell it.” Kes yanked the sheets back over his head.

“Hopeless,” Shara said, and dropped a kiss on the top of his head, where it poked out from under the sheet.

She left him there and walked barefoot into the refresher to clean up, though she didn’t bother changing out of her night clothes. On a hunch she took a detour on the way to the kitchen to step outside instead, finding Cassian resting with his back against the Force tree, watching the sunrise.

Shara smiled at him, her smile stretching when Cassian looked over and caught sight of her. She walked over and sat in the dirt beside him. “You want breakfast?”

He leaned over to kiss her temple. “I’ll help.”

“That’s not what I said,” she pointed out, but accepted Cassian’s hand up.

It went quicker with help, anyway, and it wasn’t long before Kes appeared, lured by the smell of pan frying. They took their plates outside and sat on the stoop to eat, enjoying the fresh morning air and the sun through the canopy.

In all honesty, Kes was right: there wasn’t much preparation to do for Poe. Shara had already aired out his room and changed his sheets, and they wouldn’t cook until later. It was mostly that she was excited. Since Poe had grown, he was away so much of the time, and she missed him. Maybe that made her a sappy old mother but she couldn’t help it.

It wasn’t only her, in any case. For all his talk, Kes kept half an eye on the front, like he expected Poe’s speeder to come sweeping in any second. Even Cassian was a bit jumpy, looking out at every noise, more closely resembling the wary soldier he had been when they first settled on Yavin than to the man he was now, firmly entrenched in ordinary ranch life.

Or at least, Shara hoped he was firmly entrenched. Poe’s every visit and holocall brought more news of unrest, whispered threats, support to Leia Organa’s claims. It was bad enough knowing that if the peace they had won didn’t last that Poe would be right in the middle of the conflict. She wasn’t sure she could handle Cassian deciding he belonged there, too.

She didn’t think she could stop him. She wasn’t even sure she could stop herself.

“Too serious,” Kes said, sliding his arm around Shara’s waist, and she startled a bit as she blinked at him.

“Sorry. Just thinking.” Her gaze alighted on Cassian, where he was sitting at the table with a datapad.

“Why don’t we go and--”

Kes stopped and they all looked up, their focus distracted by a very familiar sound.

“Poe!” Shara exclaimed, and ran out the front door, her partners following.

Poe was locking his speeder bike by the side of the house but the sound of the door caught his attention. He smiled, straightening. “Hey, Mom.”

Shara threw her arms around him. “I’m so glad you’re here,” she said, squeezing.

Laughing a little, Poe returned the hug with enthusiasm. “Me, too.” After Shara, he moved to Kes, hugging him just as tightly, and then to Cassian.

“Dad,” he greeted, just as he had Kes, and Cassian flushed and mumbled something as he accepted the hug. Poe was grinning when he moved back and Shara tried not to roll her eyes.

She knew Poe had taken to regularly calling Cassian ‘dad’ mostly because it made Cassian uncomfortable, but she also knew the sentiment was genuine, and that Cassian knew that, too.

Which was perhaps the biggest part of why it made him so uncomfortable. Cassian, who could never quite banish the doubt that he belonged here, and that he deserved this.

Poe was like Shara, and Kes: he just put more effort into being obvious and over the top about smothering Cassian with affection.

“You could have told us what time your transport got in, we would’ve picked you up,” Kes said. “Saved you having to rent a speeder.”

“Nah, I liked the trip,” Poe said, his thumbs in his front pockets. “Took the scenic route.”

“Are you hungry?” Shara asked. “We’ll cook.”

“Oh, I can always eat.”

Four people was probably too many hands in the kitchen, particularly their small one, but Shara, Kes, and Cassian were so used to moving around each other that it was nearly seamless. Poe, while truthfully not much of a cook, made up for it with enthusiasm. Shara set him to chopping vegetables and tearing lettuce for a salad while she made her dad’s best soft and flaky biscuits, to go with whatever Kes and Cassian were working on, some sort of bake.

They went outside to eat, as they had in the morning, settling at a small table in the shade of the trees, and Shara couldn’t picture anything she wanted more than this. It was a silly thought, to want her grown son to be around more often, but it always made her happy to have Poe home.

He scooted his chair closer to hers. “I’m not gonna vanish, Mom.”

Shara shoved him lightly. “Be nice to your mother, sometimes I think you love that X-wing of yours more than us.”

“Well, that’s because I do,” he said with that big cheeky smile he’d inherited from Kes.

“I could’ve told you that,” Cassian said from across the table, not quite smiling, but his eyes bright and amused. “He always tottered over faster to a toy starfighter than to any of us.”

“I’m a man of simple, uncomplicated desires,” Poe agreed, shrugging.

“Say that to your complicated exes,” Kes said with a cough to cover it up.

“Okay, I heard that and it was uncalled for,” Poe said, but he was laughing. “Anyway let’s remember who went to war and came back with another spouse.”

Cassian’s cheeks flushed while Kes said, “Can you blame us?”

“Mostly I try not to think about it.”

That earned Poe another smack from Shara, though she couldn’t stop her laughter. “It’s refreshing somehow to know the Navy couldn’t wipe the sass out of you, either. Makes me feel like a more successful parent.”

“Well, you know, I have to keep you on your toes, make sure you’re never bored. I don’t have any siblings to pick up the slack.”

“Stars,” Kes explained. “Can you imagine two of him running around? We’d never have survived.”

“Yeah, but come on, you had built-in back-up. Three parents!”

“And we needed all three just to handle you.”

“Especially Cassian,” Poe said with a grin. “He had the best sabacc face. Hardest to tell how angry he really was so I always assumed ‘incredibly angry, Poe, you fucked up’.”

“I never even had to yell,” Cassian said, obviously amused.

The truth was, though, they had tried to give Poe a sibling. Shara and Kes had always wanted children. Cassian had… It had been a labor of love, incorporating him into their family, but his fondness for the happy little boy Poe had been when they met had been clear from the start.

It just… hadn’t happened. Her father liked to say that it just wasn’t meant to be.

Shara had no regrets. She had two partners and a son she adored; she couldn’t rightly find a reason to complain.

Poe leaned over and kissed her cheek and she squeezed his knee, thinking about how lucky she was, to have him, to have Kes and Cassian, to have the life they had made together. At times, with the Rebel Alliance, it had seemed nearly impossible, that they would ever win, that they would ever come home to Poe, that they would have the good, simple life they had wanted.

It maybe wasn’t quite as simple as they had originally dreamed, Shara thought, her gaze on Cassian, but she wouldn’t trade it for anything.

Poe insisted on cleaning up so Shara resorted to using Cassian as a bribe to make him stay outside, suggesting they catch up. Both Poe and Cassian clearly saw through it but neither protested; she and Kes went back in the house to wash dishes.

When they finished, they went back out to join Cassian and Poe in the pleasantly warm evening. The two of them had actually moved up into the lower branches of the Force tree, sitting with their legs slung over, and Kes had to laugh. “The ground’s never good enough for him, not even for talking.”

Shara and Kes sat on the stoop instead, leaving Poe and Cassian to their conversation. They didn’t look serious, exactly, but it did look a bit more intense than simply ‘catching up’.

“He’s worried,” Kes said. “The Senate doesn’t think the First Order is anything to be concerned with but Poe values Leia’s opinion. He’s worried he isn’t doing enough because the Navy won’t let him, and he’s worried about what that means.”

Shara rested quietly against Kes. “Did he tell you that?”

“Not in so many words.”

“You think that’s what he and Cassian are talking about.”

“I think he always goes to Cassian first when he thinks it will worry us too much.”

Shara gnawed at her lip. “I think… I think we should reach out to Leia. If she believes there’s a war coming I want to know, and I want to hear it from her.”

Kes squeezed her thigh. “No use stressing about what we don’t know.”

Because stress Shara certainly would, if her son went off to fight in a war they had all made sacrifices in order to prevent.

“We should have stopped him,” Shara said. “When he wanted to join the Navy, we should have stopped him.”

“You think we could have?”

“I suppose not. He would have hated us anyway.”

“He’s the man we raised.”

Shara considered that, thought of Kes, and Cassian, and herself. Poe was the best of all of them, with all the things that drove Shara crazy, too. “I’m still gonna kill Cassian if he’s encouraging him.”

Kes chuckled. “Honestly it’s you and Cassian I’m worried about. If there’s another war, can you promise me you won’t go?”

She wanted so badly to say yes, she would never go, she would never stand for Cassian going. But she couldn’t say it, not and have it be true. She didn’t know what she would do.

Kes curled his arm around her and they sat together, watching Poe and Cassian, their heads bent together. Shara wished she knew what they were talking about, though part of her was warmed by the idea that they could talk, that they had something together outside of her and Kes. It had been one of Cassian’s largest insecurities, that he would never really have a place in Poe’s life.

It had been a needless worry, like most of Cassian’s worries. Poe loved him as easily as she and Kes did.

When Poe and Cassian dropped down out of the tree, the four of them took a walk through the Koyo melon grove. Poe ate three, while Shara teased him about making himself sick.

“Worth it,” he insisted, and said he’d pack some up to take back with him to the base.

The moon was high and the sky dark by the time they went to bed. Shara couldn’t help hugging Poe good night, and he kissed her cheek.

As she, Kes, and Cassian prepared for bed, Shara’s mind drifted back to her conversation with Kes, and she wondered again what Poe and Cassian had spoken of. It wasn’t fair to ask, of course, but she –

“Poe asked me if I knew anything about Leia Organa’s Resistance, or the First Order,” Cassian volunteered, pulling on an old, worn shirt.

Shara and Kes exchanged a glance.

“What did you say?” Kes asked.

“Nothing I haven’t already told you. He’s right to wonder. Leia has good instincts and she’s never been afraid to see what others don’t want to.”

“Did Poe say anything about the Navy’s intentions?”

“Same as before. The Senate considers the First Order a minor nuisance at most and the Navy doesn’t act without their approval.”

Shara couldn’t deny the relief that provoked within her, selfish as it may have been. She wanted Poe far, far away from the sort of war Leia was preparing for. She didn’t care how much he complained about his boring patrols; better that than fearing for his life every second.

Cassian seemed almost sorry to say what he said next. “Poe feels like he needs to live up to you, to what you did in the war. What we all did.”

“We never--”

Cassian raised his hand and Shara fell silent. “He doesn’t think you need that from him. He needs it from himself. And…” Cassian shrugged. “He’s always loved an adventure. He’s young and he’s had a happy life. He doesn’t understand the toll war takes; he doesn’t understand loss.”

When Cassian stopped talking, his expression shuttering, Kes stepped behind him to fold his arms around Cassian’s waist. Cassian exhaled, sliding his hands over Kes’ forearms.

They all got into bed, Kes at Shara’s back, Cassian in front of her. She was afraid, when she thought of what might come, that she could lose this, that she could lose Poe, lose everything they had built. All they had wanted was a galaxy where Poe would be safe and free and it hurt to know that it could all come to nothing.

“And if there is a war,” Shara said softly, her lips on Cassian’s shoulder. “Will you go?”

“Will you stop me?”

Shara knew there was only one answer. She held her arm tighter around Cassian’s waist and felt Kes’ hand on her hip. “Whatever happens, we’ll do it together.”


End file.
